You probably wouldn't ask your ancestors for their approval if you were getting divorced. Unless perhaps you're a druid, or have a very strong sense of filial obligation.
But there’s a real risk that the dear departed might be calling the shots if, a few years after a referendum, a few years after the election, we leave the EU. Imagine a scenario where there’s an EU referendum in 2017 in which a narrow majority votes to leave, and two years later Britain is heading towards the exit.
Should the exit still happen if it is only the votes of those who have died in the interim that swung the original referendum? If, even without anyone changing their mind as the consequences become apparent, what was originally a slim majority for an exit becomes a slim but growing majority in favour of staying in, simply through the gradual replacement of older, Eurosceptic voters with younger, more Europhile ones.
Source: Next Generation Europe. by Fabian Society and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung http://www.feslondon.org.uk/cms/files/fes/pdf/NextGenEurope_WEB.pdf
This isn’t just an academic question, but a very real possibility. In a 2013 poll (1), 66% of over 60s said they would vote to leave the EU versus 34% to stay in. For 18-34 year olds, it was 38% and 62% - almost inverting the preferences (the results excluded "don't knows" and "wouldn't votes"). So with some simplifications (2) and life expectancy at 82, with each year that goes on, 1/64 of the old, EU-loathing electorate dies off and is replaced by a new 1/64 that is much more relaxed about the influence of the EU and disposed to think it’s a good thing. For the result to be a close run thing at all, politicians and businesses will need to have shifted sentiment towards being more pro-EU, but for now let’s use the current opinion of those expressing a preference. 66% to leave becomes 38% - a 28% shift. In 2 x 1/64 of the electorate, the proportion that will have “churned” during the two years of negotiations, that amounts to 0.9% of the total votes cast.
So the votes of the dead could be decisive if the vote to leave the EU was won by 50.9% to 49.1% (3). In Scotland, the figures were 44.7% and 55.3%, so such a close result is feasible. Given that other surveys have shown an even sharper difference in preferences for the EU among the young, it's possible that the youth vote would break even more towards the EU, as mild preferences harden into intentions to vote.
In truth you could have a much larger margin in the vote to leave leaveand yet be going against the preferences of the population as a whole, even before adjusting for how much the decisions will affect younger as opposed to older people.
You can be too young to vote, but not too old to vote, so the preferences that have formed or can be predicted in teenagers and children carry no weight. Older people have higher rates of voter registration, not just because young people are less motivated but because once you are registered you stay registered, so inevitably there’s a cumulative increase in the percentage of voters registered with age. Then there's differential turnout, which drives the systematic privileging of old people's issues over those of the young. Just compare the cuts to the state pension (none, rather the opposite) to the squeeze on youth services (often there's no squeeze, because the service has simply been closed down). The average age of a voter is predicted to be 51, the average age of the population is 40.4, and it shows across the policies of every party.
People will object that this is denigrating old people as being of less value, or being xenophobic. But being xenophobic and being anti-EU are not the same, the stats about being anti-EU are clear, and I'm not suggesting that older people should not have a vote in this, only that the very evident difference in preferences between old and young poses a particular problem for this issue. A general election chooses a government that starts works straight away and can be kicked out in five years. But if a referendum leads to an exit, it will be two years before it is even clear what an exit means - the negotiations before a referendum will be about what happens if we stay in, not what happens if we leave, which is a nonsense in itself; and the consequences will last for decades.
I think the vote from the grave argument makes it pretty compelling that at the very least, 16 year olds should have the vote in a referendum. At least then all the living who are adults at the time of the exit will have had the chance to vote, even if the votes of the dead, taking effect up to two years posthumously, have swung the decision. But if the split in views between young and old remains as wide as this, and the margin of victory is narrow enough for that to make the difference, a simple majority for leaving should not be considered a mandate at all.
If the dead have had the casting vote in deciding to leave, once we know what leaving means, a majority of the living should ratify the decision in a new referendum, even if that would offend the ancestors.
NOTES
(1) Next Generation Europe. by Fabian Society and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung http://www.feslondon.org.uk/cms/files/fes/pdf/NextGenEurope_WEB.pdf
(2) Some of the simplifications are: voting in the referendum will be a simple function of attitudes to the EU, people’s attitudes to the EU stay with them rather than changing as they age, ignoring deaths in under 35s etc., imagining the net effect of annual deaths to be one 55+ year group shuffling off and one group of 17 year olds shuffling on with opinions consistent with the previous year. Although these are obvious simplifications. I don’t think they damage the central point.
(3) I may have mixed up swing with percentage of vote here and double counted, which would reduce the force of my argument, but I'll leave that to someone else to work out.